1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates to the mitigation of risk of Bluetooth-based Denial of Service (DoS) attacks against mobile devices equipped with Bluetooth technology.
2. Introduction
A mobile communications device equipped with Bluetooth technology may be vulnerable to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. In a Bluetooth-based DoS attack, an attacking device sends a rapid stream of Bluetooth messages to a victim device. This rapid stream of Bluetooth messages may impair the function of the victim device by depleting its battery power, flooding its display with Bluetooth messages, blocking legitimate Bluetooth messages, etc. As such, the limited resources of the victim device render this attack especially effective.
In order to mitigate the effects of a DoS attack, conventional techniques dictate that the victim device block the Bluetooth address of the attacking device. However, this countermeasure is ineffective since the attacking device may change Bluetooth addresses throughout the attack.